Is Our U.S. Dept. of Homeland ‘Security’ Preparing to War Against Its Own Citizens?

Policing: The Dallas County Sheriff’s Office gets an MRAP tactical military vehicle, used for counterinsurgency fighting in Iraq, as law enforcement becomes a collection of SWAT teams pursuing not-always-guilty Americans.

In early August, a SWAT team broke through the gates of a 3.5-acre farm in Arlington, Texas, that promotes a sustainable lifestyle and did a 10-hour search of the property. Residents were handcuffed and held at gunpoint as police looked for nonexistent marijuana plants and various city code violations.

As the owners watched, 10 tons of their private property was hauled off in trucks — dangerous items such as blackberry bushes, okra, tomatillo plants, native grasses and sunflowers that provided food and bedding for animals, everything from furniture to compost.

The city said the code citations were issued to the farm after complaints by neighbors “concerned that the conditions” at the farm “interfere with the useful enjoyment of their properties and are detrimental to property values and community appearance.”

The SWAT raid came after “the Arlington Police Department received a number of complaints that the same property owner was cultivating marijuana plants on the premises,” the city’s statement said. So why not just knock on the door with a search warrant?

…

As John W. Whitehead of the Rutherford Institute points out, there were roughly 3,000 SWAT team-style raids in the U.S. in 1980. By 2001, that number had grown to 45,000 and has since swelled to more than 80,000 a year. On an average day in America, more than 100 Americans have their homes raided by SWAT teams.

Wylie [Texas] is, according to the city’s official website, an idyllic place to live. “Why Wylie?” it asks before answering its own question with a series of exclamations: “Historic Downtown!” “Woodbridge Golf Club!” “Community Events!” “Summer Fun!”

What the homepage doesn’t mention is that Wylie apparently has a serious enough crime problem to require the use of a “mine-resistant, ambush protected” military vehicle designed for use in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The city inherited the vehicle free of charge from the U.S. government which, with its two protracted foreign wars basically over, has been reducing its vast surplus of military vehicles by giving them away to local police departments.

Thousands of 15 ton Mine-Resistant Ambush Protected(MRAP) armored fighting vehicles coming to a city near you

Obama said “we should restore the ban of military style assault weapons and a 10 round limit on magazines and that deserves a vote in congress because weapons of war have no place on our streets……our law enforcement officers should never be out-gunned…” Around the 33:00 mark: http://www.usatoday.com/videos/news/nation/2013/02/04/obama-weapons-of-war-have-no-place-on-our-streets/1891313/ . Hmmm, so why is he sending armored war machines with weaponry to a town near you? Some of these places barely have 30k residents….2700 MRAP military vehicles (or more – there were 22,000) have begun to arrive in a city near you. They weigh around 15 tons, the run-flat tires are 700lbs each, it’s mine-resistant, ambush-resistant, glass can stop up to 50 caliber rounds. These vehicles have been received in Dallas Texas, Kankakee Illinois, Minnesota, Ohio, New York, Indiana, South Carolina, Washington, Tennessee, Wisconsin: One article (from September 2013) states that Minnesota is receiving 18: “The MRAP delivered to the DCSO is just the first of 18 such vehicles, which will soon arrive in Minnesota for use by local law enforcement agencies. The Minnesota Department of Public Safety will distribute the vehicles over the next few months. “

An article from Tennessee states: “Gallatin, Hendersonville, Williamson County, Murfreesboro, Lewisburg and Scott County all received an MRAP”. Gallatin Tennessee has a population of just around 30k. Hendersonville has 52k.